Hi, Sony digital camera are really good. Their prices are on higher side but once you see the results you wont regret the price paid. A good digital camera should have good opticals and good image processing both. Opticals of sony's camera are as good as others, but the image processing is far far better. I have DSC T-50. It takes very very good photos even in poor light. Sony cameras are coming with image stabilizers that are really handy when you are shooting while moving(Shooting landscape snaps during journey) or when the object is moving(taking pictures of your friends on dance floor, they dont have to pretent to dance while giving a pose). Sony DSC T-10 is also very good.

I don't know much about digital photography, but I'll share what I do know:

Optical zoom good. Digital zoom bad. Basically, optical zoom is "real" zoom. It's done with the lens, so you don't lose digital resolution. But "digital zoom" is like enlarging a file in an editor application, and the image starts to look pixilated. So you're best off not using digital zoom at all in order to get the best source file, and then do your cropping/enlarging later.

A lens that you adjust manually to zoom (i.e., rotate or slide in/out) is faster and easier to use than power "in/out" zoom buttons. It's also a load off the batteries.

Most digital cameras come with a very small memory card, so factor in the cost of a high-capacity card. Also factor in the cost of a battery charger and back-up batteries.

Ashok Mash
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posted Jun 26, 2007 14:57:00

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Agree with Marc on the first point. Optical good, digital fake/bad.

Zoom ring - depends on the class of the camera we are talking about I guess. Almost all compact digital cameras come with electronically operated zoom. All DSLR lens and most 'bridge' models (also known as 'prosumer' cameras) would have the zoom ring. If we are discussing that class, I would recommend a 400D or 30D. And start saving to buy quality glasses!

I use a Canon 400D, and all the recent cricket photos in my flickr stream are with taken with a borrowed Canon 300mm F2.8 L lens, a professional class lens and is worth something like 4000 dollars! Ouch! The resulting image quality is worth it though!

Memory cards are quite cheap these days. I paid $80 for a 1GB CF last August and recently I bought a 4GB for just $30!

Memory cards are quite cheap these days. I paid $80 for a 1GB CF last August and recently I bought a 4GB for just $30!

Agreed. Memory cards are cheap, but if you buy one of the high speed DSLR cameras, don't cheap out. My wife recently bought the Nikon D80, mainly because it can share the same lenses that she uses on her Nikon N90. She doesn't like the newer plastic lenses as much as her older lenses.

It's blistering fast, she uses the 160x sd cards -- 2GB for about $40. It is not worth saving a few dollars, if you have to wait a 1/2 second between shots. It may not seem like much, but it's the difference between getting and missing an action shot.

Originally posted by Henry Wong: It's blistering fast, she uses the 160x sd cards -- 2GB for about $40. It is not worth saving a few dollars, if you have to wait a 1/2 second between shots. It may not seem like much, but it's the difference between getting and missing an action shot.

Absolutely. Once you get beyond 6MP cameras the quality doesn't change much for casual users but other features such as start-time and time between shots is much more noticeable. Favour medium size faster cards rather than larger slower ones.

Ashok Mash
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Joined: Oct 13, 2000
Posts: 1936

posted Jun 27, 2007 01:26:00

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Originally posted by Henry Wong: It's blistering fast, she uses the 160x sd cards -- 2GB for about $40. It is not worth saving a few dollars, if you have to wait a 1/2 second between shots. It may not seem like much, but it's the difference between getting and missing an action shot.

Henry

Yes and no. I agree, spending money on faster cards is the right thing to do, but from my experience, unless you are a dedicated sports, high speed action shooter, you probably don't need that speed.

The Canon 400D that I use can do 3 exposures per second, and on RAW format (approx 10MB per picture) it can do 10 - 12 bursts continuously before the internal buffer fills up. I tested the 1GB Sandisk Ultra II (fast) card against 4GB Sandisk (not Ultra, fist generation, slower) card, and even shooting continuous frames at the cricket match to capture bowling actions (thats how I got the shot of Sachin and a few others getting clean bowled, ball making contact to the stumbs, bails flying in the air shots...), I didn't have problem with the time it takes to write buffered images to the slower 4GB card. In fact, when I counted and compared the seconds, it was only about two seconds slower than the faster card, to shed the entire 10 or 12 images from the buffer - about 100MB or data. Downloading from the card to PC is considerably slower though, but you are not usually under any time pressure at that stage.

For a casual, one snap at a time user, the card speed makes that much of a difference, IMHO. [ June 27, 2007: Message edited by: Ashok Mash ]

Yes and no. I agree, spending money on faster cards is the right thing to do, but from my experience, unless you are a dedicated sports, high speed action shooter, you probably don't need that speed.

[ June 27, 2007: Message edited by: Ashok Mash ]

Burst mode is also useful in

1. Capturing a kid in action 2. Capturing birds in flight 3. Capturing a sports action as you rightly pointed out. 4. Capturing a sequence which you want to present in a pictoral fashion later on. 5. Capturing a frame which is still but you are in a moving object say from a car.

So I kind of would like to the dedicated to sports comment.

Speaking from personal experience I normally keep my D80 in burst mode, you never know when a sequence excites you.

I use a highspeed 2GB sandisk memory card and I guess it was worth the investment